DRUGS ISSUES DISCUSSION PAPERS by Max Cruickshank.
These papers are provided free on the website of the Scottish Parliament’s,
Futures Forum, drug and alcohol, site. They are written after 47 years of
experience as a youth worker with a specialist interest in child and youth
health issues. I have run around 5,000 health workshops for more than 80,000
young people. Running such workshops not only offers an opportunity to
educate young people, they also provide an insight on the world of young
people today, which has been used by me to inform my innovative youth
work. Hopefully they will stimulate much needed public debate, on a major
public health issue that Scotland faces, the use and misuse of all forms of
drugs.
Your comments and feedback are always welcome.
DISCUSSION PAPER Number 5
16/02/08
Drugs Classification and the law.
Using all drugs can have legal consequences. Who can use drugs, where, when
and in what circumstances and what is defined as possessing or supplying
drugs, are all things we need to be knowledgeable about, when considering our
views on drug use and misuse. Ignorance of the law can mean ending up with a
criminal record, which can prevent people working in certain jobs or prevent
them from travelling in countries like the USA.
Did you know, for instance that getting a few E’s in for your friends could land
you with a charge of possession with intent to supply a Class A drug – which
carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and an unlimited fine? Have you
ever noticed that whenever someone dies from taking E, it’s the person who gave
them the tablet that the police look for first, because they are much easier to find
and charge than the gangsters who manufactured and distributed the drug. If
you give a pill like an E to your friend, (even if it is a present), that’s supply, as
far as the law is concerned.
FACT :
Drugs offences are treated as serious crimes by Scottish courts although the
law makes a distinction between possession of a drug (i.e. for personal use)
and for supplying drugs.
FACT:
You cannot give a child under the age of 5 alcohol, so this means that anyone
over the age of 5 can consume alcohol.
At 16 and 17 you can, in a licensed restaurant order beer, cider, table wine (not
Buckfast) or perry ( a pear drink like babysham) with you meal. No adult
supervision is required in law.
At 18 you can drink whatever alcoholic drinks you like.
FACT:
You can consume tobacco at any age but you cannot purchase it in the Scotland
until you are 18 years of age. Changed from 16 years of age in 2007.
How are decisions made on which drugs are the most dangerous.
In the United Kingdom, Illegal drugs are defined under the drugs acts and are
divided into 3 categories. Decisions on which drugs fit into which category is
decided by a panel of experts on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs,
(ACMD), assessing how dangerous drugs are and then they advise the
Government who make the laws to suit this recommendation.
In 2007 a committee of scientists and medical specialists in drug use and misuse
met and drew up a new way of deciding which drugs are of most danger to the
public. This was published in the British Medical Journal, The Lancet. The
debate about this proposal is still going on, as to whether this is a better of
worse way of defining how dangerous drugs are. This is explained later in this
paper.
Under the current dangerous drugs acts the categories of drugs are as follows:
Note it does not include alcohol or tobacco.
Class A
includes Psychedelics such as Acid, LSD and Magic Mushrooms, Opiates such as
Heroin, Methadone, Cocaine and Crack Cocaine. Stimulants such as, ecstasy and
khat.
Class B
includes Stimulants such as Amphetamine, Speed , MDMA (Ecstasy)
Any Class B drug prepared for injection (e.g. Speed in a syringe) automatically
becomes Class A.
Class C includes Cannabis, Benzodiazepines such as Valium,Temazepam,
Diazepam (Jellies), Lorenzepam, Nitrazepam (moggies), Flunitrazepam
(Rohyponol or wallbangers).
The legal penalties for each category are as follows:
Class A
Has the highest penalties; up to 7 years imprisonment or unlimited fine, or both
for possession. Life imprisonment or unlimited fine, or both, for production and
dealing.
Class B
Has lower maximum penalties for possession; up to 5 years imprisonment or an
unlimited fine, or both. Up to 14 years imprisonment or an unlimited fine or both
for production and dealing.
Class C
Has the lowest penalties, up to 2 years imprisonment or a fine, or both for
possession. 5 years imprisonment or an unlimited fine, or both for production or
dealing.
Any class B drugs in injectable form, is treated as Class A.
Some Class C drugs are legal to possess- for example some anabolic steroids are
Class C, schedule 4 Part 11 drugs, which means they may be possessed in
medical form without a prescription.
FACT:
It is an offence to be in charge of a motor vehicle while ‘unfit to drive through
drink or drugs. The drugs can include illegal drugs, prescribed medicines or
solvents.
Scotland, has no official police cautioning system. All drug offences are
supposed to be reported to the Procurator Fiscal, who will decide whether or not
to proceed with a court case.
Police forces in England, Wales and Ireland, have different policies which
includes the option of cautioning suspects (this is when you get a telling-off, but
don’t get charged with an offence).
FACT:
Cannabis has been reclassified as a Class C drug.
In 2007 scientists met in the UK to try to find a better way of classifying drugs,
including legal drugs. Noted below is what they came up with as an alternative
to the current UK Dangerous Drugs Act, classifications.
Scientists Say UK Drug Classification System Is
Flawed
A new UK study suggests that the current UK drug classification system of A, B,
and C of the Misuse of Drugs Act is flawed and should be replaced by an
evidence-based system of potential harm that would place alcohol and tobacco
higher than cannabis and ecstasy.
The study is published in The Lancet.
Professor David Nutt from the University of Bristol, Professor Colin Blakemore,
Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council, and two colleagues developed
a new drug ranking system that would class socially acceptable tobacco and
alcohol as more harmful than cannabis, and considerably more dangerous than
Class A drugs such as ecstasy and LSD.
They say the current classification system used in the UK is flawed and should
be scrapped.
Their proposed system of classification assesses harm in an "evidence-based
fashion". They use three main factors to determine the potential harm that a
substance causes:
(1) Physical harm to the user,
(2) Tendency to induce dependence in the user, and
(3) The effect of its use on families, communities and society in general.
Within each factor there are three sub-categories which altogether made up a
nine-category "matrix of harm". Each category attracts a score of between 0 and
3, with 3 representing the most harm. An overall mean harm score of between 0
and 3 is then calculated for each drug.
They asked two independent expert panels to score 20 different substances
using this new system. The 20 drugs included five legal potentially misused
substances (alcohol, khat, solvents, alkyl nitrites, and tobacco) and one recently
classified one (ketamine) so that the league table showed some familiar
"benchmarks".
The two panels found the method easy to use and came up with very similar
harm scores for each drug.
In order of overall harm, the 20 drugs were given the following ranking (the most
harmful, heroin at number 1 scored nearly 3, while the least harmful khat at
number 20 scored less than 1):
(1) Heroin (most harmful).
(2) Cocaine.
(3) Barbiturates.
( Secanol, Turinal, Amytal, Soneryl. Luminal, Prominal &
Nembutal)
(4) Street Methodone.
(5) Alcohol.
(6) Ketamine.
(7) Benzodiazepines. ( Rohypnol, Mogadon, Normison, Jellies, Euhypnos,
eggs, Halcion, Upjohns, Librium, Valium & Ativan)
(8) Amphetamine. (Speed)
(9) Tobacco.
(10) Buprenorphine. (Opiates, Temgesics, Subutex, Heroin, DF118’s,
Diconol, Co-proxamol, Distalgesic, Codine, Solpadine,
Morphine, Koalin & Morphine)
(11) Cannabis.
(12) Solvents.
(13) 4-MTA (para-methylthioamphetamine).
(14) LSD.
(15) Methylphenidate (ritalin).
(16) Anabolic steroids.
(17) GHB (gamma hydroxybutyric acid).
(18) Ecstasy.
(MDMA, MDA & MDEA )
(19) Alkyl nitrites. (poppers)
(20) Khat (least harmful).
Prof Nutt who led the study said, "Drug misuse and abuse are major health
problems. Our methodology offers a systematic framework and process that
could be used by national and international regulatory bodies to assess the harm
of current and future drugs of abuse".
Prof Blackmore said that while drug policy is aimed at reducing harm to users,
their families and society as a whole, the present system was not a "Rational,
evidence-based method for assessing the harm of drugs". He said the system
they have devised, on the other hand, is.
"We hope that policy makers will take note of the fact that the resulting ranking of
drugs differs substantially from their classification in the Misuse of Drugs Act and
that alcohol and tobacco are judged more harmful than many illegal substances,"
he added.
Profs Nutt, Blackmore and colleagues criticized the current Class A, B, C system
saying it was too arbitrary, put too much emphasis on unusual reactions that
affect very few users, and did not specify the relative risks of a drug.
In their conclusions they comment on what they see as its most glaring
deficiencies:
"The fact that the two most widely used legal drugs lie in the upper half of the
ranking of harm is surely important information that should be taken into account
in public debate on illegal drug use. Discussions based on a formal assessment
of harm rather than on prejudice and assumptions might help society to engage
in a more rational debate about the relative risks and harms of drugs".
"Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential
misuse."
David Nutt, Leslie A King, William Saulsbury, Colin Blakemore.
The Lancet 2007; 369:1047-1053
DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60464-4
Points for discussion on the two different methods of classifying
how dangerous drugs are.
The existing drugs acts are very complicated and do not include alcohol or
tobacco, two of the drugs that cause the most deaths and other problems for
users and their families.
Neither the existing method of classification not the new proposal make any
allowance for the fact that illegal drugs have no quality controls.
When buying illegal drugs the user never actually knows what they are buying.
The variation in strength of the drugs and the fact that sometimes they are
cocktails of more than one substance, makes it difficult to take seriously the idea
of any classification system of illegal drugs.
If you buy a bottle of Vodka at 37.5% alcohol and then buy another one you get
exactly the same substance in the same quantity.
Conversely if you purchase a quantity of Acid or LSD, it could contain a very
powerful dose of that drug, or virtually non of the drug may be present. High
strength Acid or LSD could induce very sever paranoia, anxiety states or even
psychotic feelings. Low strength could provide a mild hallucinogenic trip that
was quite pleasant, and even fairly harmless.
To have a rigid system of classification of illegal drugs, which have no control of
quality on them, sends out messages to users that a drug may be less dangerous
than they think. This is especially true of drugs like Ecstasy. The Metropolitan
police report that they regularly find up to 100 different tablets sold by dealers as
Ecstasy. The E’s may have different shapes, different colors, and different logo’s
on them, to fool the buyers. Testing of these drugs reveals that they contain a
very wide range of substances, whose strengths can vary from containing almost
no (MDMA) drug content at all, to others with very powerful contents.
The immature binger of E’s regularly report to me that they took “5, 10 or more
E’s, believing that more equals better effects. If in the 5-10 tablets they bought,
even from the same dealer, they happened to purchase mainly high strength
tablets, then the consequences clearly could be drastic – and in the case of E’s are
almost always fatal. The fact that such deaths are fairly uncommon only serves to
reinforce the users’ belief that they know what they are buying and are clever
enough to know what quantity to take. Reality is that as clearly some E’s contain
nothing at all, and most have very little strength to them – the myth that binging
on E’s is not a problem persists – until the next death of a young person.
Young people today are pretty fatalistic, and few have strong religious beliefs.
A priest friend of mine, who has had to conduct the funerals of many addicts
told me that it never failed to amaze him, that after the raw emotions of the
funeral service was over, conversations with the mostly young mourners, often
revealed fatalistic views. They would often comment that the deceased had “just
been unlucky” or “must have been the poor bugger that got the bad batch of the
drug killed him”. They had no concept of the idea that perhaps they had been
ignorant of the facts about the substances they took, or ignored all warnings of
bad batches of heroin on the streets by the police, or that taking cocktails of
alcohol, cannabis, speed, E’s and cocaine in the same night might just have dire
consequences.
Drug classification of illegal substances, is at best problematic; at worst, if we get
it wrong, could cause massive damage or death.
How long do drugs stay in our bodies?
How long drugs can be detected in our urine, our blood or even in our hair
depends on many things;
The dose of the drug that is taken can vary,
The drugs strength or potency,
Our age and body size,
Our food and fluid intake,
Our metabolic rates and how good our kidney function is,
Over what period of time the drug was consumed.
The methods of testing have varying levels of accuracy, as testing method are
still fairly crude so, it is not an exact science.
Here is a very rough guide to drug elimination rates of different drugs from our
bodies.
Amphetamines (SPEED)
Cannabis (Occasional use)
(heavy use)
Cocaine
Diazepam
Heroin
Methadone
Acid/LSD
Ecstasy
2-3 days
2-7 days
Up to 30 days
12 hours to 3 days
1- 2 days
1-2 days
2 days
2-3 days
2-4 days
Alcohol
One unit of alcohol per hour for a fully grown
adult.
Eliminated from our body in about 7 days after
stopping smoking.
Nicotine
©
Max Cruickshank
Youth Work Consultant & Health Issues Trainer,
A Right Pair of Chances Company
Email: Chancer@maxbis.demon.co.uk
16/02/08